With Ascension – published by Harper Voyager – Nicholas Binge has gone big and delivered an epic, cinematic experience, a speculative thriller blending big ideas and intense personal stakes. Told in epistolary format by way of somewhat disjointed letters written by the protagonist – Harold Tunmore – to his niece Harriet, it’s the tale of a man both losing his mind and finding himself. A renowned physicist, among other things, Harold is recruited by a shadowy organisation to assist with a secretive scientific project: a vast, impossible mountain has appeared out of nowhere and a group of brilliant minds are tasked with understanding what it is, how it can possibly exist, and what its implications might be. As they scale its towering sides in search of answers, it exerts an inexorable pull on each of them, testing them in ways they couldn’t expect and placing them in danger they couldn’t imagine.
There’s a lot going on in Ascension, not just in terms of following Harold’s journey to and up the mountain, but also in the gradual unpacking of a character who starts off as an almost total mystery to his family. Without spoiling the details, the book’s concept is that most of Harold’s letters were discovered by his estranged brother much later in life, with occasional notes throughout reinforcing the epistolary device and adding broader context. Through the medium of letter writing as a kind of journaling, Harold reveals his history and unique viewpoint, and explores the tangle of science and religion that he wrestled with in both his personal life and his experiences on the mountain. They’re the writings of a man whose carefully curated life was breaking down around him, full of extraordinary experiences and mental anguish.
On the face of things, the mystery of the mountain and the craziness that happens on its slopes is the main draw here. Again, no spoilers, but things get pretty wild and dark as the story progresses, starting off like a thriller with some clever speculative elements before taking things determinedly into the SF space as it races towards its breathless, brutal conclusion. At the heart of the story, however, is a whole lot of interesting psychology, for both Harold and his companions. Something about the mountain and the trials of scaling it brings back the past and challenges people’s perceptions of themselves, gradually pushing each of them from curiosity and determination into outright obsession. The epistolary nature of the narrative adds in an enjoyable element of doubt, encouraging the reader to imagine how Harold’s brother and niece might have reacted to reading these letters and processing this wild story.
Along the way Binge tackles everything from the perception of time and history to the question destiny versus free will, but crucially spends just as much time digging into Harold’s past and his (intentionally or otherwise, quite clearly neurodivergent) personality, as his experiences on the mountain force him to come to terms with his mistakes and the pain they caused him. This combination of big themes and personal stakes with a thriller’s pacing means it’s both a darkly gripping page-turner and a thought-provoking head-scratcher, but whether you label it as speculative fiction, literary science fiction or just ‘mad but brilliant’, this is one of those books that really blends genres in its own unique fashion. There are some bold choices in both the narrative (especially towards the end) and the structure, epistolary novels not being to everyone’s taste, but this really is a must-read for those who enjoy bold, contemporary and adventurous science fiction.
Review copy provided by the publisher
See also: Nicholas Binge’s guest post discussing his 2022 and 2023 SFF recommendations
Ascension is published by Harper Voyager on the 27th April 2023 – check out the links below to order* your copy:
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